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Inspiration4 announces the first civilian crew member on the Today Show

After battling cancer at the very hospital she now works at to help other children battling cancer, Hayley Arceneaux is already an inspiration to us all. Now she will get to continue her amazing life story by partaking in the first all civilian mission to space.

Inspiration4 is a mission funded by Ship4 founder Jared Isaacman which will take 4 passengers, including Isaacman, into space onboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Partnering with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital the 3 civilians Isaacman is bringing with him on this journey each represents a pillar of some sort of good feature in humanity.

Arceneaux represents the pillar of “Hope”, as a child wishing to become an astronaut those dreams were squashed after having part of her femur removed in a surgery to remove cancer from her body. Now she is a physician assistant at the same hospital that helped save her life and is on the frontline of battling cancer for others while also now achieving her life long dream to go to space.

“This mission is changing things and getting to be a cancer survivor in space is such an incredible honor, and I can’t wait to talk to my patients about this and just to show them that they can’t limit themselves.”

Hayley Arceneaux

The next two seats will be selected soon

The other two seats, representing “Generosity” and “Prosperity”, will be selected on March 1st and there is still a few days left to enter to have a chance of winning.

The “Generosity” seat will be given to someone that has supported St. Jude by donating to the hospital through their site. $1 is equal to 10 entries to the contest with certain amounts awarding you with missions patches, shirts, or posters. Some of the top donation packages included aerobatic flights in an L-39 or MiG-29 aircraft.

The “Prosperity” seat is meant for someone that uses Isaacman’s Shift4 Payments service to start a business and submit an inspirational video detailing why they think they deserve to go to space. Both of these seats plan to be filled by the end of this month and whoever is selected will most likely need to get started with training for the flight immediately since the flight is planned to launch no earlier than October 21, 2021.

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Avatar for Seth Kurkowski Seth Kurkowski

Seth Kurkowski covers launches and general space news for Space Explored. He has been following launches from Florida since 2018.